


Dead Girls

by EAU1636



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s07e01 Oracle, Episode: s07e02 Raga, Episode: s07e03 Zenana, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, many many deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAU1636/pseuds/EAU1636
Summary: The respectful sergeant with kind eyes stands guard over what’s left of her.The scene draws to a close.What’s a dead girl to do? Her curiosity piqued, Molly sticks around, to see how things play out in this story that begins with her death.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Violetta Talenti, Mrs. Bright/Reginald Bright
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13





	Dead Girls

**Author's Note:**

> "The female of the species might hold good for Kipling, but he never walked a crooked mile in these brogues."
> 
> -Max DeBryn

Molly’s the first. A late night cloaked in fog. Dark clouds drifting across a full moon. The edge of a new decade. It doesn’t bode well.

It’s been a long night in a tight dress. The lewd laughter and leering eyes have worn her tip-tabulating smile down to a hard lipped line.

She knows better than to walk alone at night, knows where the shortcut home so often leads. But she wants this little slice of quiet, this passage alone, before the nagging mother and the clinging child. The thought of another set of hands on her tonight makes her want to scream.

There will be another set of hands, and she will scream, but the hands will be there to muffle it.

She can hardly feign surprise, when the whistling starts. She’s half known what’s coming from the moment her face first flashed across the screen. A pretty girl like her, a night like this, who could she hope to meet but death?

Most of it happens offscreen. No one wants to watch a dead girl die this way. She reaches a grasping hand up, for dramatic effect, to show her desperation, to prove she doesn’t go without a fight.

And then it’s over. Cut to morning.

She leans against the fence, a spectator, a spectre. It’s touching, watching the doctor show her such care. The first dead body she’s ever seen is her own.

When the weary inspector looks down over the bridge at her body below, it’s quite the tragic tableau. Even the weather pitches in, offering up a grim grey sky.

If the mascara smudged beneath her eyes or the dirt caked across her neck aren’t what she would have chosen, she doesn’t complain.

What the coppers see when they look at her body is a dead girl they couldn’t save.

She’s done her part.

The respectful sergeant with kind eyes stands guard over what’s left of her.

The scene draws to a close.

What’s a dead girl to do? Her curiosity piqued, Molly sticks around, to see how things play out in this story that begins with her death.

Naomi is next. Molly can’t help but harbor some hope that it won’t turn out the way she knows it will. She’s met Dr. Benford. She is kind, intelligent, strong willed. She has aspirations. Enough for an arc maybe. A character fleshed out enough to serve as more than just flesh.

She gets a name, at least, before she’s a body, more than Molly could aspire to.

Even after Naomi calls the freckled sergeant, it might not turn out the way it does. Maybe he arrives just as those lacivious hands wrap round her arms. Maybe he saves this one. Attempted murder would still be enough to muddy the waters, to take the spotlight off Carl so he can slink back into the shadows.

But that’s not the way this story goes.

So many things can make a dead girl. Everything becomes a weapon. The spiraling staircase is suddenly sinister. The red herring of a whistled tune pulls the inevitable along. This current only flows one way.

When Dr. Naomi Benford is hurled over that banister, Molly is waiting down below to help her to her feet. Naomi rises, straightens the memory of her hair, and looks down at her body with detached scientific interest, as composed in death as in life.

It isn’t a dignified ending. Her legs and arms all akimbo, the gelatinous puddle of blood beneath what was once such a pretty face.

Well, things come at a price afterall. Her death isn’t for nothing. Just look at the way the coppers’ shoulders sag beneath the weight of her deadness. Just look at the meaning it gives to what’s left unsaid between them.

What more can a dead girl ask for?

Let’s be fair. There’s an entire episode without a single dead girl, just the promise of one.

The pale faced dead boy packs a punch too. He reminds the coppers of their own lost innocence, their own bygone youth. But it’s the mother at the morgue that really sells the suffering. A crying woman is worth nearly as much as a dead one.

The dead girls wait around.

Dead men, even dead boys, don’t linger.

Next up is Bridget. No one is surprised by what waits for Bridget in the echoing blackness beneath the bridge, least of all Bridget herself. She couldn’t help but notice the foreshadowing gradually darkening her view.

Didn’t the fatherly inspector warn her of the danger in walking alone at night? Nevermind that he said it while out walking alone. He’s always liked nights, especially after a rain. Bridget likes rainy nights too, but she isn’t an inspector, or even a man, and so should know better than to be out in one.

Her purpose in this story is to find a body and then become one. To let the inspector and his wife get to know her just well enough that her death will be particularly cumbersome, a nice little thorn in the side.

Bridget looks away as the coppers look her over. Naomi and Molly compliment her yellow beret, such a cheerful color, to distract her from the gaping gaze of those unseeing eyes and the smear of blood across her broken neck. It’s a bit grim, the blood sucking and all. Not a pretty picture.

It all ties up nicely, though. Molly dying. And then Naomi, who knew Molly, dying. And now Bridget, who found Naomi, dying. A neat little daisy chain of death.

But this story isn’t over. There are multiple threads being woven here, and at the end of each dangles a limp dead-girl marionette.

They don’t have long to wait for the next one. The three dead girls stand in the snow, listening to the soon to be dead girl sing.

She’s lovely. But weren’t they all?

Her voice is full of pure, angelic innocence.

The dead girls shake their heads.

It’s clear, when the ominous music swells, that Petra will not be crossing the towpath bridge again.

A different killer this time, not Sturgis who did for Molly and Bridget, nor Blish who did for Naomi. But it all amounts to the same thing. They’re all still dead. And their deaths are still connected. Molly, it seems, made such an appealing dead girl that Clemens, who found her, wanted one of his own. And so Petra joins them.

She’s spared the sight of blood. She looks peaceful enough that she might be sleeping, apart from the purple tint of her skin and lips. The girls all agree there are worse ways to go.

The crime scene livens up when the hard nosed inspector and the chisel cheeked sergeant have a row across Petra’s body, the dead girl a wedge between them.

Even dead girls enjoy a little excitement. Bridget urges the men on, as she used to while watching wrestling, hoping they’ll come to blows. She’s always been a bit blood thirsty. The irony isn’t lost on her.

Then comes Nancy, a professor at Lady Matilda’s. Her last name might be anything. It isn’t important, and neither is she.

The dead girls turn away from the sickening thud as her attractive head makes contact with the marble bust.

It doesn’t take long. Petra steps forward, a familiar face to welcome her to the fold.

Nancy is annoyed, when there’s talk of an accident. She may be dead but she’s not stupid.

But she needn’t worry, there are no accidents in this story, only a great many coincidences.

The copper curled sergeant connects the dots and the dead girls clap as he switches the lights on. What a nice little showcase for his cleverness.

The dead girls appreciate this bit of showmanship, as the story is by now growing a bit convoluted, crowded as it is with dead girls. Five of them now. With four different killers.

But the story isn’t over yet, no, not nearly.

The next one is top tier. A dead wife. The anguish exacted by a dead wife is almost unmatched. The only thing worth more is a dead daughter, but that card in this deck has already been played.

Mrs. Bright doesn’t have a first name because she’s never needed one.

The dead girls listen as the Chief Superintendent says Mrs. Bright has never been lovelier. They listen as Mrs. Bright tells her husband how proud she is of him, as she thanks him for always taking care of her so well. The Chief Superintendent promises that he always shall.

The dead girls exchange glances.

Mrs. Bright has the decorum to die offscreen. No body is necessary here. This is meant to be heart wrenching, not gruesome. The news of her death will be enough.

The dead girls wear their proper solemn faces.

Mrs. Bright has been threatening to die for so long now that it doesn’t come as a shock. Well, it does come as a shock, actually, but if anything it’s rather a relief to be done with all that dying.

The next is more the shadow of a dead girl.

Pippa’s been there all along, watching her killer and the dishy sergeant shag in her bed. It’s lucky dead girls can still roll their eyes.

It doesn’t matter that she’s dead until he knows it.

And isn’t it all worth it, once he finally figures it out?

Only a dead girl can inspire that kind of regret.

All the dead girls and the dead wife catch the train to Venice.

They appreciate the theatrical touch of the cemetery, even if it does cut a bit close to the bone.

The headliner is next. The girl that matters most because she matters to the mournful sergeant.

Why does Violetta come to the cemetery? Maybe it's fear that brings her. Maybe it’s love.

One look at her face is enough to know that she doesn’t know herself. She’s just following her cues. And it doesn’t matter anyway, who she is or what she’s done or why she’s done it. What matters is this, what has been waiting for her from the moment she first came on screen. What matters is how she dies.

Everyone gets to watch Violetta die, because she does it so well.

Those tragic, imploring eyes. No hint of anything unsightly. She’s sorry, she’s so sorry. She’s done terrible things.

The remorseful sergeant assures her that it doesn't matter, nothing matters.

Violetta declares her love and lets a single tear slide down her beautiful face. She closes her eyes and falls limp in his embrace.

She dies exquisitely.

He loves her, then. Of course he does. What man doesn’t love the girl that dies in his arms?

Every word she’s ever uttered becomes a stone in his pockets.

Violetta steps back and takes in the scene. She has never been a real girl, only a girl playing a part. And it’s the role of a lifetime, dying this way.

She turns, satisfied, and joins the girls she has and hasn’t killed. They applaud. They begrudge her nothing now she’s one of them.

After the curtain of night falls, the sad eyed sergeant will leave Violetta’s body behind.

A dead girl is a ballast, not an anchor.

He will carry the guilt into the next story, where the dead girls cannot follow.

This story has been a tragedy, but it is his brokenness at the center of it, not theirs.

The dead girls stand amongst the gravestones, their faces in shadow, watching the boat carrying the inspector and the sergeant cut across the black expanse of water, leaving a rupture of waves in its wake.

**Author's Note:**

> While I have many, MANY issues with series 7, this isn't meant to be a critique of the series, or a moral statement or anything. I just thought it was an interesting perspective to play around with.


End file.
